Drawer support devices commonly employed in household storage cabinets rely on the sides of the cabinet for support and guidance of the inserted drawers. For example, the runners which guide and support the drawers are typically fastened directly to the interior sides of the cabinet. This practice, however, presents several difficulties. First, this technique cannot be used in cabinets that have center supports or in cabinets that are not "square" (e.g., cabinets wherein the sides are not oriented at ninety degree angles with respect to the front and back sides). Second, even if the cabinets have the requisite shape and style, this technique produces permanent alterations in the cabinet. As a result, a person cannot easily remove the support device because of the permanent marks on the cabinet sidewalls. Third, the materials utilized in the sidewalls are often not sized or constructed to provide the stability to function as the support.
There have been several attempts to provide support structures which are not connected to sidewalls inside of a locker--for example in the situation where the installer does not own the locker and so is prohibited from marring, permanently altering, or otherwise defacing the locker. Examples of these references include U.S. Pat. No. 4,283,099 issued to Burton and U.S. Pat. No. 3,612,633 issued to Bloom. Burton generally discloses a cabinet having sidewalls to support drawers and shelves. The sidewalls of the cabinet are not connected to the sidewalls of the enclosure (i.e., the locker) into which the cabinet is placed. Bloom discloses a shelf support kit wherein shelves are supported by vertical members connected to horizontal shelf support members. Shelf support is provided by the vertical members which are not connected to the sidewalls. However, each of these references suffers from the drawback that they are sized for a single enclosure and do not utilize sliding drawers. Therefore, retrofitting within various sized cabinets would be impossible, absent having a large number of unrelated sized supports and shelves.
Other art includes U.S. Pat. No. 4,191,136 issued to Cherry which discloses a cabinet for use in a mobile vehicle. Support for horizontal runners is provided by vertical members. The device also uses horizontal stabilizers which are located between the vertical members. Further, U.S. Pat. No. 4,453,790 issued to Cohen et al. discloses a cabinet having horizontal runners supported by vertical members, and horizontal stabilizers located between vertical members. Cohen also illustrates two drawers which are located side by side in the cabinet. The preceding two devices, however, do not disclose vertical support members which may be placed at various widths from each other and which are supported only by the surface on which the vertical support members are located.
Therefore, there is a need for a new and improved sliding drawer apparatus and method for use within variously sized storage cabinets, and which may be constructed as part of the enclosure or which may be retrofit into such enclosures.